Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SIXTY NINE – YEARS IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL (PART 4)
Sometime in the middle of my medical school, my dad emigrated. My wife and I saw him and Rimma off at the city train station. I didn’t go to Moscow for the farewell; we had not yet become close enough for this, after the turbulent days of my parents’ divorce and my dad’s move to his new wife in a much better apartment.
What could we children do? It’s a pity that the difficult sixteen years of separation ended like this, especially for my mother, who was left alone in tough conditions, but hopefully with like-minded children. The bad thing was that circles of gossip were dispersing surrounding the events, which the city public was eager for.
I understood my father’s position as a shift of the woman. Well, this happens all the time, and all the ups and downs of life are just a layering, an entourage. Still, the strong difference in living conditions in the old and new families did not leave me alone that feelings do not fully explain everything. Not to mention the best apartment in a new building, it became possible, with the help of his wife, to repay the state lawsuit that was hanging on all the shareholders collectively. By that time, only five percent of it had been paid, and my father’s activity in paying off the debt opened the way for the rest of his accomplices to leave the country.
The story of their chief engineer (we would now say manager or CEO) Rabinovich ended amazingly. He, having buttered up where necessary, managed to emerge from the process innocent, quietly divorced his first wife, sent his children with significant funds to the States, and he himself opened a new business and married a young beauty. Alas, their naked corpses in the bedroom a la Louis XVI, and perhaps Louis XVI without “a la”, were discovered in a beautiful new apartment early in the morning by a visiting maid. The death from gas poisoning was attributed to a faulty gas stove, and the investigation was closed.
Dad knew the details of the story from his boss, the director of the Salon, for whom he worked as an assistant, and who once ordered me a gray Volga from Moscow. The director gave dad a mission to get catalogs of large clothing supermarkets from America. For some reason, customs did not let them through. His sister Leah repeatedly sent him these catalogs, but they did not reach the recipient. Then she sent me a box full of catalogs. Dad and I went to the post office. The parcel contained several books on art and philosophy. I was delighted, however, dad made a fuss, wrote a complaint, and the parcel was confiscated in a special department: neither the catalogs nor the books were not returned.
Before leaving, the director gave my dad ten thousand rubles. I immediately appreciated mathematically that only the owner of millions could give such a sum, just as a person with a salary of one hundred rubles could donate a ruble once to a suffering person. Dad still hoped to manage to send the director catalogs (why did he desperately need them?), but nothing came of it.
Mom calmly survived the departure of her ex-husband. Perhaps the thought flashed through her mind to present the letter of debt that dad signed, borrowing money from his father-in-law to invest in the business. But in her family they didn’t do that. The blood of the proud “polish pani” flowed in her veins. She showed me an old yellowed mortgage note signed by Dad and said,
“This is just in case Volya goes completely crazy and doesn’t want to help you move.” Remind him of this document.
Dear Mom… She believed that noble deeds make an impression on others, without a statute of limitations.
During a rotation in hospital surgery, I unexpectedly had a serious clash with a venerable doctor. That’s how it happened.
At the beginning of the semester, we came for an internship at a distant clinic, the domain of the chief surgeon of the Republic. He was gone for a couple of weeks in September, and then he returned from vacation and showed up for the daily morning conference. The audience greeted him with applause. Whether it was respect or fawning, I didn’t know, but I clapped along with the others.
A tall, silver haired, but strong man bowed, smiling graciously at the audience, looked around, and suddenly, frowning, extended his hand into the hall and said loudly,
“You, please stand up!”
There was slight confusion. Doctors and students looked around to determine who this order applied to. The leader’s hand was extended somewhere in the center of the hall, approximately to where the students were sitting.
“You, you! I’m telling you!” he growled and clarified, “With a beard!”
I poked myself in the chest questioningly.
“Hell yes! Does anyone else dare to be here with a beard?”
“Pirogov,” I said and pointed to the portrait of the famous surgeon that decorated the room.
Everyone burst out laughing. Apparently this was a mistake in court etiquette. The “boss” turned purple.
“Go find someone to cite as an example! Pirogov scratched his ass with his finger, and then operated with the same hand!”
This was a terrible slander against the father of Russian surgery, anesthesiology and sterility. But the loaded train could no longer be stopped. The siren roared,
“If you come from Russia and don’t know the local customs, I will teach them to you! No one who wants to be a surgeon here dares contradict me! And while I am the chief surgeon of Georgia, not a single person with a beard will enter the operating room. No sooner said than done – I’ll shave all over Georgia! I’m not kicking you out today, but you don’t have to come to the next lesson without shaving!”
Age, intelligence and upbringing did not allow me to get into a squabble. But my blood vessels constricted, as if before an attack. I somehow waited for the break and went “backstage” to explain myself.
“Oh, did you come to apologize?” the chief surgeon greeted me, lighting a cigarette.
“I came to explain something to you,” I said politely, “If you want, we will speak Georgian, I was born and live here. My last name is Neiman, and you see that I am not a boy. I can’t shave and here’s why…
“Go on,” the chief surgeon frowned.
“I have no allergies or skin diseases, I have no scars or physical flaws, my beard is not an attribute of religion or sect. I only wear it because my women have liked it for years!”
“What?” the surgeon roared, “Insolent! Go away! The order remains in effect!”
After the break, our leader ascended the pulpit and continued the attack,
“I am outraged by the behavior of student Neiman! He did not grow up in Russia, he is local and knows our customs. I would understand him if, firstly, he wore a beard because of allergies or a skin disease, secondly, he had scars or physical defects on his face, thirdly, his beard was an attribute of a religion or sect. He only wears it because his women like it! Know Neiman, I would not allow even my son to do this, and I won’t permit you entering the next lecture with a beard!”
After the lecture, students, assistants and two associate professors began to persuade me not to get into trouble and not ruin my career.
“You don’t know his connections,” everyone said, “His cousin is the vice-rector for finance at the medical institute. Who are you crossing swords with?”
At home my blood pressure rose. I lay on a narrow red sofa with a face the color of a sofa and mentally honed answers to various questions.
The next day, I came to the lecture as I was. Some students brought postcards of famous surgeons with facial hair and quietly passed them through the rows, like proclamations. My neat beard caused hysterical laughter from the surgeons anticipating the performance.
The chief surgeon entered the hall, immediately found me with his eyes and silently plopped down in a chair on the stage. It looks like he had pressure too. Then he gathered his strength and said quietly,
“Either me or you! Go to the rector’s office and bring permission for a beard. I’ll call and let them know you’re coming. Know that I won’t let you in without paper.”
“Thank you,” I thanked politely and drove off.
The rector’s office was already waiting for me,
“Neither the rector’s office nor the dean’s office will give you permission to wear a beard, mustache, hairstyle or jacket. This is nonsense. But you, Neiman, show prudence: shave your beard and do not spoil your relationship with the chief surgeon of Georgia. You are free.”
Damn, how everyone loved this word! To remind you that thirty years ago you would have been sitting on a bunk and rotting. Was I really that free?
Thinking about how to influence my unexpected overlord, I left the rector’s office and met a guy I knew from the Georgian sector, who held some position in the Komsomol Committee or in the Student Society. Only now it dawned on me that his last name coincides with the last name of the chief surgeon, and that this is his son. It is no coincidence that students, as soon as they entered the Medical School, found out the situation of the parents of their fellow students.
“Hello, Tengiz,” I said, “Did you hear that your dad got into a fight with me?”
“I Heard it. Because of the beard?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s not worth wasting energy. He thinks that there is someone behind you who wants to throw him off. He is very stubborn and cruel. I got a lot of harsh spanks from him since my childhood.
“But do you love your dad?”
“Yes, sure.”
“Then talk to him. Tell him that Neiman is a good guy, no one is behind him, but he also has a dad. Do you know who he is?”
“No. And who is he?”
“He is a US citizen,” (well, I exaggerated), “I’ll make one call to my dad, and the Voice of America will make the chief surgeon of Georgia the laughing stock of the whole world. Does he really need this? And you don’t need that. Yes, me too. So why shouldn’t our dads show restraint?”
“Yes, yes, of course, I’ll talk to him in the evening. Wait, do not call tonight.”
“Fine. One day won’t change anything. Bye.”
The next morning everyone asked me, “Did they give you a certificate?”
When they had found that I do not have a permission for the beard, they start looking at me as if I were sick, a person who dare refusing to shave his beard. So they were choosing their seats further away from me, apparently not wanting to get infected, or so that the lightning from the stage wouldn’t inadvertently burn them.
The chief surgeon entered the room, easily found me with his eyes and… smiled,
“Congratulations, Neiman,” he said. You came out of the test with honor. Everyone was probably surprised, what kind of tyrant is our chief surgeon? But this was just a test of endurance, a test of the fighting spirit. We need young people with strong character! How can you lean on something that offers no resistance?”
The fourth year was spent choosing a specialty. Rotation after rotation. Each one seemed more interesting than others. Each one fascinated me, and I tried to get into it a little deeper, trying it on myself. But the problem was not in this or that specialization, but in finding employment in it. Some department heads directly said that they would be glad to, but they would not be able to take me, because the demand is so great, and there are so few places that it would not be possible to accommodate both the children of important people and me. I was grateful for the fair warning instead of a polite smile, a long wait and the inevitable fiasco.
I wanted to acquire a narrow surgical specialty, and the only area in which I could get any advantage according to the documents was orthopedics. But my previous research experience at SRITO lacked a modern article. So I started writing it.
While working with sources in libraries, I dug up unexpected articles about forgotten operations in old magazines. They were made by Doctor Nikolaev during the First World War and the Civil War in Russia. Then I never saw such operations anywhere; surgery developed in a completely different direction. But as it turned out later, Doctor Nikolaev helped not only the disabled people of his time, but also the student of the future, what neither he nor even I could imagine.
An interesting topic for me was the treatment of obstetric paralysis using muscle transplantation methods – tendon-muscular plastics. At the Department of Orthopedics there was an assistant professor, a specialist in this field, whom I assisted in three or four operations on paralysis of the arm of a child, and in addition, I processed another two dozen suitable case histories.
In the fifth year, the All-Union Student Conference took place at our medical institute. My colorful slides of muscle plastics made an impression on the audience. None of the authorities, especially Vice-Rector Avaliani, doubted that I had good connections: both the curator of the section, Academician A, and the chairman of all surgical meetings, the main “barber” of Georgia, supported my report.
That’s how I ended up in orthopedics. But the old professor Okropiridze did not approve of my choice.
“Why do you need this bloody specialty, Nicholas,” he told me, “You are a cultured person, a representative of a respected nation. You would have a hammer in your pocket and a book of Sigismund (in the sense of Freud) in your hands, but you are carried into the midst of bloodthirsty louts, devouring each other along with bones and entrails.
Well, he was a decent person and the author of not only manuals for beginning traumatologists, but also poetic translations from Italian.
Psychiatry turned out to be an interesting rotation. In modern medicine, this is a young and rapidly developing field. Many doctors have culture and development beyond knowledge in medical fields, which apparently helps them in their profession. However, the most fascinating books of Dr. Freud and the killer in a gray hospital gown are two opposite poles of the same specialty.
During our practice, a tragedy occurred within the walls of the institute. On the May holidays, patients were given shovels and sent to a “subbotnik” (free public works) to dig up the hospital park. Then one of the psychos hit his comrade in the head with a shovel, sending him immediately to a better world…
Two friends worked for me at the Research Institute of Psychiatry or simply “Madhouse” – Eli and Asya. Eli had by that time married a girl from a prestigious family. His father-in-law played tennis with the Deputy Minister of Health and fate finally smiled on him. Of course, the fate smiled not on the deputy minister, and not on the father-in-law, but on Eli. From a modest position as a laboratory assistant, he jumped to the position of head of the laboratory, which was quite fair.
My wife and I went to his thesis defense. The atmosphere was unique. Eli’s supervisor made everyone laugh, saying that he was impressed not by the dissertation, but by Saroyan’s story, which Eli translated from English and published in the evening city newspaper, and he advises guests to read a good story rather than a study on the permeability of membranes.
Unfortunately, Eli’s marriage, which started so well, turned out to be not happy and fell apart, which I will talk about in a separate chapter, entirely dedicated to my friend.
Asya, by that time, like me, had a family and a daughter, the same age as me, and worked as an internist for “crazy people.”
They also made a new friend there, the wife of Viktor Saneev, the world’s only three-time Olympic champion in the triple jump. When the Americans were making a film about Victor, local authorities brought delicacies to a designated store, kicked out the customers and allowed the Saneevs to buy a jar of black caviar for pennies.
All the good company had little to do with my rotation when students tried to interview and diagnose mental patients, locked in the same room with them. I remember that students’ diagnoses always differed significantly from the official ones. I could not understand why this was so until I became acquainted with the American classification, which requires strict criteria to be met for diagnosis.
The director of the institute was an old academician, with a bushy Budenov mustache which were looking sadly down. The scientist put forward the idea that a new human species, Homo Moralis, has now evolved, which is “superior” to Homo Sapiens. Each psychiatrist, of course, believed that, unlike himself, the academician had already begun to acquire the traits of his patients.
The head of the Department of Psychiatry was a teacher of the old school, the dear Professor Alikhan. He explained that first of all, the doctor must check whether the patient is oriented in place (knows where he is), in time (year, date, time) and person (understands who he is).
“Look, for example, I am a woman from Gudauta, who was taken from the train station of our city to the police station the day before yesterday.”
“Complete disorientation!” the joker shouted from the back rows.
And I realized that the specialty of a psychiatrist was not for me. Penetrating into the world of a mentally ill person is not an easy and unpleasant job, and who knows, maybe every time when you come back, you grab a piece of a strange world for yourself, until one day you finally turn into a woman from Gudauta living in the day before yesterday.
In August, before internship, that is, the last year of practice, medical students were sent to military camps for training. This trip made no sense to me. There was no need for me to engage in drill training and cram regulations, since I already had a military rank, and even received a promotion. We took the military medicine exam in the fall, after returning to the institute. Therefore, I had almost nothing to do at the training camp.
The first thing I tried was to free myself from them. But it was as incredible as receiving catalogs from America. All the officials understood you, but they could not help. They needed an order from above.
Then I made a compromise. The training camp was in Batumi, a seaside resort. I proposed a second option at the military department. My family and I rent a dacha by the sea for a month and I go to military medicine classes every day, and spend the rest of the time with my family. This option didn’t work either. I was already so fed of this Soviet stupidity.
“Okay,” I thought, “Blame it on yourself!” It’s not that I threatened anyone, but I was well aware that our officers-teachers underestimated my previous higher education, and as a result, my officer rank.
I borrowed a summer officer’s uniform with shoulder straps of a senior lieutenant from an officer I knew, brother of Denis, shaved as required by the regulations and reported to the train station. No one recognized me when I marched up to the head of the training camp and reported that Senior Lieutenant Neiman had arrived for training. Our teachers were more lecturers than officers, although they wore military uniforms. They had long been unaccustomed to army procedures, so the commander gathered in the presence of an unfamiliar officer, measuring his step and raising his hand to his cap like a saber wave. From all this buffoonery, the major’s eyes dazzled, and, not recognizing me as his student at all, he commanded: “At ease!” and extended his palm to me for a friendly handshake.
“I beg your pardon, Comrade Senior Lieutenant, I don’t know that you are assigned to our training camp,” he mumbled when one of the students explained, laughing,
“But this is our Neiman! Nick!”
Then the officer realized who was in front of him, shaven and in an officer’s uniform.
“Neiman?! What kind of masquerade is this?!”
“The same as yours, Comrade Major. We are heading to the same army.”
The difficulties for our officers were just beginning. The next morning, in the military regiment, I repeated the same trick. I showed up to the regiment commander and reported to him about my arrival. I must say that from my youth I was good at drill training, which made an impression on the army officers.
The colonel immediately called our training chief and scolded him like a boy in my presence,
“Why does an unregistered officer arrive at the unit, where should I quarter him?”
“Comrade Colonel, this is our student, what kind of housing? He will sleep in the barracks, along with others.”
“In your own regiment you will place officers together with soldiers in violation of the regulations! And if something happens, you yourself will go to court!”
The colonel quickly called the duty officer and, having found out that there was an empty room in the medical unit, he ordered it to be whitewashed before 18:00 and to move in a new officer – me.
On the parade ground it turned out that the military commanders of three platoons were smaller in rank than me, and I could not be in any of the platoons. I must say that the regiment commander got out of this situation even faster, appointing me as political officer of the training camp, since their commander (the head of the club) was a captain. He turned out to be an enterprising officer who immediately divided the responsibilities,
“I’ll take charge of the morning formations, and I’ll entrust the delivery of cinema from the City House for Officer to you, do you agree?”
Of course I agreed. In the morning, when the student company was forming up on the parade ground, I walked past them with a towel on my shoulder, waving everyone a hand. Sometimes I went to the beach in the morning, but at noon I chose a best movie, then had lunch in the dining room of the City Officer House with our teachers, and the car took us all to the unit for medical classes. Until four or five o’clock I became a student again, and spent the evening visiting fellow students in the barracks or with regimental officers – platoon commanders – at home.
A few words about these guys. One was a career officer, and two were officers for two-year service after a college. All of them were younger than me, but had families, and their wives fed us, who gathered in turn at everyone’s house in the house behind the wall of the unit. I remember that everyone played the guitar, and we organized home concerts, and not just drank vodka, as is commonly thought of in the army.
Less often, we went to the officers’ dormitory in the city, where we drank, played cards and, in civilian clothes, went for a walk on the boulevard and in the park. There were imported amusement machines there. One day a drunken incident happened to a young officer from this hostel. Returning to his place at night, he decided to ride a wheel. He climbed over the fence and managed to spin the wheel, bypassing the automatic with short circuit, and then quickly buckled up. The wheel gained momentum and spun like a centrifuge, but the automation did not work. The screams of the unfortunate man woke up the residents of the city. Firefighters and paramedics found an unconscious man strapped to a centrifuge and the ride all covered in vomit.
This was not the most serious incident that summer. When the tank regiment went out for shooting, a soldier died, whose head was torn off by a tank lid.
In addition to choosing films for the part, my other humanitarian function was to take students into the city – to call home from the telephone station. This was not difficult for me in an officer’s uniform, but a soldier without an officer and without a leave card could be arrested by the commandant’s patrol. That’s what happened one day. While I was talking to my wife in the booth, one student in a soldier’s uniform went for ice cream and disappeared. I had to go to the commandant’s office. Indeed, the patrol arrested him. But the commandant didn’t even think of giving him back to me; moreover, he sent me to get my hair cut shorter. The next morning, the student, frightened by the damp basement and rats, after ten laps of running, was given to the major teacher. Justice in the guardhouse was understood this way.
But we soon left, and in September we passed the exams. I changed my military specialty from long-distance communications to medicine.
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